Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication system and a method of controlling the same, an image forming apparatus and a method of controlling the same, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
As the troubleshooting for products is becoming complicated, customers frequently make direct telephone inquiries to the maker's call centers to cope with troubles. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-59720 (D1) discloses a remote maintenance service that uses voice and moving image communication and remote control for quick troubleshooting between an image forming apparatus and a call center. In this remote maintenance service, the image forming apparatus that receives support and an information processing apparatus in the call center that provides the support normally exist in different firewalls.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2013-29922 (D2) proposes placing, on the Internet, a relay server configured to relay communication between an image forming apparatus and an information processing apparatus so as to allow them to communicate. When such a relay server is placed, the apparatuses that exist in different firewalls can communicate.
Assuming that the technique described in D2 is applied to the remote maintenance service of D1, when a remote maintenance service start request is received from a customer, the image forming apparatus and the call center need to be connected to the relay server. At this time, it is also necessary to confirm whether the image forming apparatus connected to the relay server is an image forming apparatus with a contract of the remote maintenance service and authenticate the apparatus. To implement this, it is necessary to appropriately manage, for all image forming apparatuses as the application targets of the remote maintenance service, information representing a sales organization to which an image forming apparatus belongs and what kind of contract is made for the image forming apparatus.
In general, a call center is run for each sales organization of image forming apparatuses. Hence, the relay server is prepared for each sales organization to reduce the load on the relay server or ensure security. Not one relay server but a plurality of relay servers are placed. The call center grasps the information of the relay servers to which the sales organization of its own is connected, and can therefore be connected to an appropriate relay server.
On the other hand, an image forming apparatus normally has no information required for connection to the relay server of the sales organization that manages the image forming apparatus. For this reason, when, for example, initially placing the image forming apparatus, an operation of setting the information of a relay server by a serviceman is necessary. However, manually inputting the information of the relay server to the image forming apparatus requires a lot of time and effort of the serviceman. In addition, an input error may occur.